New Right

The New Right was a conservative movement that existed in American politics from 1956 until the 1980s. The New Right combined libertarianism, traditionalism, and anti-communism, and National Review founder William F. Buckley Jr. was considered its first leader. The New Right rejected the isolationist Old Right and the views of the centrist Rockefeller Republicans, combining libertarian economics with social conservatism and an aggressive foreign policy. The New Right Republicans supported interventionism during the overseas fight against communism, classical liberal economics, traditional social values, and ardent anti-communism, and the New Right Republicans became a major faction within the Republican Party under Barry Goldwater. In the wake of the Goldwater campaign, the New Right became more populist and religious, affiliating itself with the Christian right during the 1970s. The peak of the New Right's power was during Ronald Reagan's administration from 1981 to 1989, but the New Right declined with the rise of neoconservatism and paleoconservatism.